japan

From a nearby shrine here in Tokyo, I can hear the jingling of a bell being rung by devotees of Inari, a Shinto harvest god. They're praying for prosperity, which may or may not come in the form of lots of rice.

Doubtless the deity would drool over the latest rice-packing machine from automation firm Suzumo. It's a sushi robot that specializes in inarizushi, a fishless sushi variety consisting of rice wrapped in pouches of fried tofu, which the god and his fox messengers crave big-time. … Read more

TOKYO--If you're in love with your iPhone, Bandai's Smartpet lets it really walk all over you.

Shown off at the 2012 International Tokyo Toy Show, which opened to the public yesterday, Smartpet turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a robotic canine companion.

The pooch can walk around (top speed: three steps per second), sit up, and wag its tail. The app shows a variety of cartoon faces on the touch screen, or whatever face you want to give it. … Read more

Consumer gadgets can be very addictive. Almost as addictive as french fries, onion rings, and anything else you can cook in hot oil. Even the gadgets themselves.

Photographer Henry Hargreaves has captured our insatiable hunger for new technology with a series of startling images of deep-fried electronics. We already knew we were digital junkies, but these images don't go down so easily. … Read more

Subways in Tokyo are crowded enough, and they're plastered with ads on the walls and ads hanging from the ceiling. Sometimes, entire carriages are wrapped in ads outside. Straps are mini-billboards too, but now they're interactive.

In an experiment that's been going on for a few weeks, printing company Shunkosha has been deploying its strap covers on parts of the Tokyo subway to prove the effectiveness of Strappy.

Strappy is a boxy little plastic covering that sits over the strap. Many similar strap covers already exist on Tokyo trains, but they're for old-fashioned analog ads, and sometimes QR ads. … Read more

Got a chip on your shoulder, pal? Or is that just a 20-axis humanoid telepresence robot?

For cyber-boffins from Japan's Yamagata University, it's the latter. It seems this creepy little golem has been riding around on shoulders in northern Japan, probably freaking citizens out.

The project, dubbed the MH-2 wearable communication robot, was recently presented at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in St. Paul, Minn., where it turned some heads.

As IEEE Spectrum tells us, the MH-2 is a telepresence robot that acts as an avatar for your friends around the world. With its intricate parallel wire mechanisms and 20 axes of motion, it can reproduce their movements in a realistic fashion. … Read more

Getting the hang of 3D animation would probably overwhelm most folks, but the foot-tall Qumarion mannequin could radically simplify the process of creating realistic movement in 3D computer-generated models.

The 67,800 yen ($850) Qumarion, set to debut in Japan in a few months, features a robust array of sensors to assist with creating realistic 3D animation. Developed by Japan's University of Tsukuba and University of Electro-communications, Qumarion can pose, flex, sit, stand, or assume nearly any other position imaginable. … Read more

I still see kids in the Tokyo subway actually using payphones (remember those?) to call their parents as they make their way home from school. Telecommunications giant NTT DoCoMo seems to be launching this just-for-junior Android-powered smartphone to convince them to knock it off.

The HW-01D (PDF) comes in yellow, blue, or pink. It's powered by Android, has a 2.0-inch QVGA screen with a 240x320 resolution.

The browser and phone can be restricted to parent-set contacts and sites.

It has a 100-decibel alarm to ward off nasty people, GPS, and can send SMS texts so you can keep … Read more

Last update: May 17 at 4:38 a.m. PT.

Pinterest has garnered investment interest from one of the world's largest Internet service providers, in a move that could value the social photo-sharing service at $1.5 billion.

Rakuten, which runs the largest e-commerce site in Japan, announced Thursday that it is leading a $100 million round of investment in Pinterest. Participating in the round are existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital, along with an unspecified number of angel investors.

Rakuten's portion of the funding is in excess of $50 million, according to All Things D, … Read more

Online-payment company PayPal and Japanese telecom and Internet firm Softbank announced this evening a joint venture, PayPal Japan, meant to create "the premier digital wallet for online, mobile, and offline transactions" in the Asian country -- one of the world's largest economies.

As a first step, the companies said Japan would be the fifth nation to get PayPal Here, a Square-like service that lets small businesses accept credit and debit card transactions -- and PayPal payments -- through a smartphone.

PayPal Here was unveiled in March, in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong. A week … Read more